A Report On The C-E Translation Of Peng Yulin's Family Letters(Excerpts)

Peng Yulin was a famous patriotic general in Hunan Province in the modern history of China.He was the creator of the Waterborne Forces of the Xiang Army(??),usually referred to as the“Hunan Braves”and the founder of modern Chinese navy.What's more,Peng Yulin was recognized as the“Four Eminently High Ranking Officers in the Restoration Period in the Qing Dynasty”,along with Zeng Guofan,Zuo Zongtang and Hu Linyi.Peng Yulin's Family Letters,a collection of Peng's family letters as well as his thoughts,expresses his opinions and ideas on government administration,national governance,family exhortation and self-cultivation,so this translation practice has important significance in researching into the late Qing Dynasty and spreading Huxiang culture.The task of this translation practice is to translate 29 pieces of Peng Yulin's Family Letters(vernacular Chinese version published by Foreign Language Press)into English.Guided by Peter Newmark's Text Typology Theory and his theory about semantic translation,as well as translation methods and strategies of C-E syntactic transformation,culture-loaded words and four-character words,the translator tried her best to exactly transfer the meaning of the original text and make the translation smooth and idiomatical.According to Peter Newmark,translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text(Newmark,1998:5).Based on Peter Newmark's opinion,a translational analysis of the source language text based on its comprehension is the basis of translation.The analysis of a text concerns many aspects,the author's intention,the translator's intention,the readership,text styles,the language quality of the original text and so on.Peng Yulin's Family Letters is personal correspondence in terms of its language function,which basically belongs to the expressive text of the Text Typology Theory.Thus,Newmark's Text Typology Theory offers a good perspective for its translation.According to Newmark,semantic translation is used for expressive texts,which requires the translation to retain the grammatical and lexical features of the original text as much as possible.The original text contains lots of culture-loaded words and four-character words which embody special Chinese culture,making the source text difficult to translate.Furthermore,complex sentences are widely used in the source text.When dealing with these difficulties,the translator referred to many dictionaries and consulted the translator of Library of Chinese Classics.As for culture-loaded words,transliteration and annotation are adopted;while for four-character words,the translator attempts to find their corresponding expressions in English idioms or retain their symmetrical structures as much as possible.When translating complex sentences,division,combination and negation are adopted to preserve the original writer's style.